A special night in Sandbach, California.

It was always going to be a special night. A private gig to celebrate the joint birthdays of Martin and Elaine, who apart from being a lovely couple, have booked us to play their gorgeous annual garden parties over several years. Martin has connections in the music industry going right back to the heady 1970s and for this gig, he’d booked Barry ‘The Fish’ Melton from Country Joe and the Fish fame (part of Woodstock history!). Barry having been one of the most influential psychedelic guitarists from the 70s, having also toured with Dinosaurs.

These days ‘The Fish’ is touring with a 2nd guitarist, Frenchman Stephane. Together that make THE most laid-back, sunny Californian 70’s style music you could imagine, with some soulful French numbers thrown in too.

Truly sublime!

Like the other acts on, many of our musical and poetic friends did a turn, we played a short set before Barry and Stephan took to the stage, but we gave it some gusto, both we, and the crowd, seemed to really enjoy it. Thanks to Mike  Aichison of We Are Nomad, who played a lovely set, for the photo of us. 

*This post may well be updated on receipt of any further photographs etc from the night.

Hatching a baseline.

Today I’ve been involved in bass-playing capacity to do some tracking on Tim Lee’s next album, along with partner in musical crimes, Rob. Top producer in these parts Glyn Sutton of Colossus Productions.
The day started unusually with a 2nd brood of chicks requiring some help to get off the bow of my boat and into the canal with mum (where 2 of them has already made it). Thankfully this proved easy, and the recording session that followed proved just as smooth, unflappable, without too many quacks.
I know Tim likes a quick turnaround from recording to release, so I imagine this will be out in a matter of months.
Should be good, some great songs on there!

Rob (left) and myself.

Broken, but a blast!

The Blue Yellows at the Alsager Music Festival.

Having had a weird virus giving me the strangest bunch of uncomfortable and exhausting   symptoms since May the 3rd on and off, it was nice, at last, to play a gig while feeling well (though the virus had ‘gone under’ for a couple of days at a time in the past before returning with renewed vigour so... touch wood!).

In an ideal world, bands would get an hour or so to sound check, and I’ve even worked with pro bands who have taken up to two and a half hours to perfect their sound to the venue and iron out any problems, so these festivals we often play where you get a really quick turnaround, it’s a big challenge to try and get it right for all involved, and our sound engineer Matt, stage manager and whole team did a great job!

However, I did manage to snap a string in the first few seconds of the opening song (first time in quite a while as I’ve been using these NY Elixir strings which have an extra carbon component, and so are extra strong ((and expensive!)) ). So while I ran off stage, grabbed the spare guitar and tuned it, Em played the intro to the next tune over and over for a bit, until I was ready.. such pros, this lot on The BYs. 

We also got a brand new song into the set, ‘Who put Bella in the Witch Elm?’ and the gang played it so well, sounded pretty raucous from where I was anyway, in fact the whole set did.

It was great to catch good friends in The Dying Lights who sounded more laid back and melodic than usual, but in a good and groovy way. Good friends were all around the seating areas in fact, so nice to see you all and have at least a tinsy catch-upette. 

The Dying Lights on flowering form.

It was a blast!

Spot the new song?